Forbes July 16, 2014 Five hundred billion cups of coffee are consumed every day worldwide, but few people know much about the world’s second most traded commodity (behind oil!). So here are five quick facts about how coffee gets from farms around the world to you. 1. Coffee comes from a fruit. If you’ve never seen a coffee plant in person, it’s pretty amazing. Coffee plants grow around the world, but the best coffee is grown in mountainous regions that receive predictable and abundant rain. Once a year, these plants sprout a bright red, cherry-like fruit. Farmers in Central America, for example, spend two months harvesting the brightest red cherries, before the coffee “bean” (the seed of the fruit) is picked, washed, dried, hulled, sorted, graded, polished, packed, and shipped off to U.S.-based coffee roasters. 2. The coffee supply chain is completely broken. Because coffee is a perishable item, ideally it would com...